


Dance of Life

by Boji



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005), Torchwood
Genre: M/M, Originally Posted on LiveJournal, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-07-08
Updated: 2008-07-08
Packaged: 2018-02-18 11:20:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,163
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2346623
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Boji/pseuds/Boji
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In another 'verse, the Doctor's brush with regeneration went a little differently.</p><p><i>Spoilers:</i> 4:12 - Stolen Earth & 4:13 - Journey's End.</p><p>The setting and canonical characters are thanks to RTD & SM respectively. Some of the dialogue is taken directly from the episodes <i>Stolen Earth & Journey's End</i> and is quoted without permission. The rest of the dialogue is mine. As is the slash-tinted take on <i>that</i> scene.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dance of Life

**Author's Note:**

> My thanks to all the fic writers before me who have played on the idea of the TARDIS' sentience and telepathy. My thanks also to the the fic writer who first posited the idea that Jack feels wrong to the Doctor because he feels right. If I knew who you were, I'd credit. Last, but certainly not least, my thanks to [](http://irreparable.livejournal.com/profile)[**irreparable**](http://irreparable.livejournal.com/) for her eagle eye and beta-skills  & to [](http://unfeathered.livejournal.com/profile)[](http://unfeathered.livejournal.com/)**unfeathered** for reading, commenting and chasing commas.

Teleporting was a kick in the head. Tongue tingling, senses heightened, it made Jack Harkness feel as if his blood was once more laced with 'lert-stims. Damn, but he'd missed travelling by fold-space! Zapped across the country with the push of a button, he stepped onto a London street.

Coming in guns blazing at the Dalek - that was instinct. His mind caught up with what he'd done in the millisecond it took sound, scent and sight to recalibrate. Then, all he could think was: _Man down, there's always a man down_. He hadn't been there for Owen, had been too late to help Tosh - his elegant, brilliant Toshiko who'd never really recovered from her treatment at the hands of the red-caps - but Jack wasn't about to let the Doctor down. Shouldering his unwieldy gun, Jack sprinted forward from his point of teleport-in. _…Too late. I'm always a moment too late._ Dalek remains smoldered in the centre of the road, but Jack only had eyes for the man who lay on the ground.

And leaning over the Doctor?

Jack's breath caught at the familiar sweep of blonde hair. Rose! Somehow it was Rose! And running towards her and the Doctor? Another woman, the red-head who'd been on the sub-wave transmission. Their footfalls echoed loudly in the post-battle stillness, almost drowning out Rose's pleas of:

"Don't die, don't die…"

"Get him into the TARDIS. Quick." Jack's request was a barely veiled order, his words belying the fear that had gripped him the moment he'd seen the Doctor. "Move!" Jack grabbed Rose's fallen artillery as the two women pulled the Doctor to his feet. Together they lurched towards the TARDIS with all the grace of entrants in a three-legged race, while Jack kept point and tried to bank down his irritation at not being the one propelling the Doctor to safety. Where there was one Dalek on patrol, there could be others. And if one shot from the eyestalk was slowly-lethal, what might a second do to a Time Lord's biology?

 _He's not dying… only transmuting,_ Jack said to himself, in memory of a wide half-manic grin and protruding ears. That funny-beautiful face he'd kissed, loved, long ago in a far-flung future.

~ ~ ~ 

  
It wasn't Jack's key that went into the lock, but he was the one shouldering the TARDIS door open to a pale green and gold welcome. And _there,_ a light touch at the back of his mind, warmth long-missed and never forgotten. But there was no time. No time to focus on the feeling, to reach for that ethereal mind in return.

Suffused with pain, convulsing, the Doctor lay on the floor of the TARDIS.

"What do we do? There must be some medicine or something!" From over his shoulder Jack could see Rose's hands cradling the Doctor's head, while the other woman - Donna was it? - crouched by his side. Their hushed, pleading voices were clogged with tears.

"Just step back. Rose, do as I say and step back. He's dying and you _know_ what happens next." Jack knew he ought to stow the heavy artillery, but it was more important to try and move Rose and Donna back - away from a Time Lord about to immolate.

"What do you mean?" Donna asked.

"He can't die," Rose sobbed. "Not now. I came all this way."

"What do you mean? What happens next?" Donna's questions went unanswered, as Rose pleaded with the Doctor.

Jack banked down the flare of irritation he felt at Rose's tears. She knew better than most that the indefinable, indefatigable spirit which _was_ the Doctor at his core, would survive any and all change. He'd be different yes, but he'd still be the same man who took someone's hand and asked them to run.

"Get back!"

Donna was smart enough to move round to the other side of the console at Jack's insistence, but Rose was still kneeling on the floor. Last time she'd been so stubborn she'd saved the universe - bludgeoned the TARDIS - and depending who you asked, saved Jack's life or dammed him to an eternity of wrongness. A moment after the memory of that particular conversation with the Doctor flashed into his mind, pain undimmed, Jack felt a gentle, soothing, touch rippling against this consciousness.

_The TARDIS._

Jack had long imagined her song as a soft thrum of light, shining with exquisite precision. Hers was the gift of language, the gift of home in the vast expanse of everywhere, and nowhere. The TARDIS left her imprint on those the Doctor had invited abroad - at least, she'd left her mark indelibly upon Jack. He'd spent a decade's worth of days wondering if the barely perceptible touch which lingered in the first moment after he was slammed back into life was anything more than his imagination. He'd wondered if revivification reset him back to the days when he was still travelling in the TARDIS. And, if it always would. Not that he was any better at sending thoughts and feelings back to her, some hundred - or was that thousand? - years after she'd first touched his mind. Jack imagined his mental voice to be blunt and abrasive where the TARDIS' was poetry in song. Which was why he tried to focus-send his joy at re-connection as a whisper, as he darted round the console, reaching out to grab Donna and move Rose.

Lying where he'd fallen the Doctor was reaching out, reaching up, a glow beginning to suffuse his palm. _Time Lords really did burn brighter than a star_ , Jack thought, as he reached down to tug Rose away from the other man.

The slim-fingered, now luminescent, hand reached up and locked onto Jack's bare wrist - tightly. "Captain…"

"Good luck, Doctor…" Jack tugged, but the Doctor's grip didn't lessen, if anything it grew tighter.

"Jack…" Struggling to get up off the floor, the Doctor clutched at the taller, broader man. "I'm sorry."

"Will someone please tell me what is going on?" Donna begged tearfully. From the corner of his eye, Jack could see her pulling on Rose's arm, trying to keep Rose on the other side of the console - as ordered.

"When he's dying, his body it repairs itself, it changes." Rose's voice shook and Jack could hear the unvoiced sobs. "But you can't…"

His heartbeat pulsing, Jack could almost taste his own adrenaline, for the Doctor wasn't letting go of his wrist, nor of his coat lapels. That was when Jack realised he was along for the ride, come what may. Not that he hadn't survived worse: _Abaddon. The Master. The suffocating pressure of a thousand years of mud and sediment - the Master wielding pain and slow, slow, death for amusement._

 _Oh, Jack…_ The Doctor's words were quiet, for all that they reverberated in Jack's head. They swayed together, the Time Lord and the man who was now something other than human, lurching in the direction of the console. Jack brought his hands up to push the Doctor away - then stopped.

Mouth dry, pulse racing Jack stared down at his own hands. "What the…?"

Impossibly, improbably, golden light streamed forth from Jack's fingers. And the corona of light was growing, expanding, as if called forth by the energy pulsating through the Doctor's body.

 _I bring life._ The whisper of a memory reverberated like the echo from a gunshot.

"What? What?" Struggling, the Doctor tried to move forward, out of the shelter of Jack's loose hold, but his control was giving way to involuntary movement. "I'm sorry. It's too late. I'm -

Regenerating."  


~ ~ ~ 

In the moment that the Doctor gasped out the word, flinging his head back, light blazed from every orifice, streamed forth from each extremity. Jack held on. Half-formed thoughts of celestial fire surged into his mind. The Doctor was regenerating, turning to atoms, waves and particles - going up like a champagne supernova in his arms. Jack held on. And:

_His skin was flayed, his skin was silk. A thousand butterflies danced across his body, his sweat their nourishment. He was - a broken in-breath, a puckering nipple teased by the charge from a sonic stim, a tree-bud - bursting into flower - a thrumming, singing, pulsing star, a new-born baby's cry._ 


Jack was adrift with pleasure. Fire licked across his throat, coiled in his navel and whipped at the muscles in his thighs. His cock filled and strained and the pleasure coiling in the base of his skull heightened. _And like the hanged man, the doctor dances, and the endlessly-wrong captain becomes..._

_A Fixed Point._

The thought-voice echoed and Jack saw:

_space - endless - expanse of night and light - and Gallifrey, majestic and stagnating scent of entropy and stench of order - chaos straining to run, dance, hide, ever seeking, ever repelling - lifeandwordsandartpeopleplacesmusic._ And then nothing. But


_A Fixed Point._

And Jack saw and was seen. And what was reflected was _understood._ And then the flavour in his mind changed, tinged bittersweet with gratitude. The Doctor ran-running-run - centuries folding down upon centuries. Ran from home and hearth, friends and love. Run from all that could stagnate and die. And Jack? Fixed-point, endless-constant Jack.

_Fear..._

Of what Jack could be forced to become, if the Doctor reached out to him across all multiverses, reached out to anchor himself to one mind - alone - not one woven into a lattice of many. Need. And fear of need that he could warp this mind, this man. Hidden under that thought, Jack could clearly read the Doctor's fear that his need _alone_ had broken the Master. As he tried to chase that thought to its completion, Jack felt his ears, his mind, his thoughts clear and...

Over the pounding of his own single heartbeat, he heard shouting, pleading - womens voices - Rose and Donna.

Jack remembered, The TARDIS, the Doctor, Rose, Donna, the Daleks.

~ ~ ~ 

"It's been forever and a day since I scared easy," Jack whispered, as the double-beat of a unique heartbeat faded from his mind. "Remember that, Doctor…"

Sensing that the Doctor could stand unaided, Jack stepped back and looked at the now renewed Doctor: Same static charged hair, same face, same smile. And eyes as deep as the noir lagoons on Hajirak Four.

Jack watched the Doctor run his tongue across his teeth. "Hmmm… same teeth. Same teeth!"

"Was it good for you?" Jack asked him, sotto voice

"Captain Jack Harkness, you are…"

"Impossible?" Jack couldn't help his broad smile.

"Fantastic!" The Doctor's eyes glowed with enthusiasm, glinted with just a spark of manic joy.

Rose pushed past Jack and rushed towards the Doctor. "You're still you?"

"I'm still me," the Doctor said as Rose moved in for a hug. "Used the regeneration energy to heal myself, but as soon as that was done I didn't need to change. I didn't want to. Why would I? Look at me? So, to stop the energy going all the way, you could say I shared the wealth."

And then he was moving Rose away gently, moving to hug Donna. "So the earth moves for you with a freaking big light show then does it alien boy?" Donna asked. She grinned at Jack over the Doctor's shoulder. "You know what they say about all the good ones. The pretty ones too."

Jack grinned back, "Captain Jack Harkness. Delighted, and at your service."

"Ooh er… he's a bit of…"

"All right Jack," the Doctor spluttered, then smiled. "He's one of a kind is Jack - literally."

"So, that's why you didn't go up like a flaming great Catherine Wheel then? When the Doctor's death was all heat, no fire?"

"Petit-mort instead of grand?" Jack quipped back.

"All mouth no trousers?" Donna bantered back.

"What?" Rose asked. "You're not burned, how come you're not burned? If you're not burned, then why did we have to get out the way? Why were you... scared?" Her last, reticent question was directed to the Doctor.

"Scared? I wasn't scared? Well, okay, maybe just a tad worried. For you, and Donna," the Doctor said, hands gesticulating wildly.

"And not Jack? Rose pushed. "Why weren't you scared for Jack?"

"Same uniform, different Captain Jack," Jack said. "I've changed, Rose. Really."

"Oh, some things about you are just the same they are," the Doctor grinned. "Forever chancing your arm without buying a bloke a drink."

"Still watching your six."

"And a very nice six it is too!" the Doctor said looking over his own shoulder, turning on his heel. "I'm brilliant, I am. Donna, don't you think I look good in this suit?" Any reply that Donna Noble might have made was forgotten as the TARDIS lost power and the ship was plunged into darkness. "They've got us. Power's gone. Some kind of chronon loop…"

In the recesses of Jack's mind, he could still feel the TARDIS. Her sorrow was metallic on his tongue. In contrast, the Doctor's mind was sharp with determination, Jack's eyes watered. He'd gone up the line before. He'd willingly do it again.

If this was the end, there was nowhere else he'd rather be.


End file.
